


Strange Corners

by ensorcel



Category: The Devil Wears Prada (2006)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, F/F, F/M, Femslash, Older Woman/Younger Woman
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-23
Updated: 2019-04-23
Packaged: 2020-01-24 08:48:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,773
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18567967
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ensorcel/pseuds/ensorcel
Summary: Miranda's not quite sure what to do next.A study of a life well lived, and to the beginnings of a life well loved.





	Strange Corners

**Author's Note:**

  * For [zigostia](https://archiveofourown.org/users/zigostia/gifts).
  * Inspired by [Better Homes and Gardens](https://archiveofourown.org/works/750407) by [Telanu](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Telanu/pseuds/Telanu). 



> Disclaimer: All rights reserved to Twentieth Century Fox and Laura Weisberger. Any characters recognized do not belong to me. 
> 
> For the lovely zigostia, I hope you had a happy birthday, and to many more fics in the future. 
> 
> Many thanks to M for saving this story.

I.

Miranda likes to think that spring is the peak of her year. Perhaps not professionally, nor personally really, but watching the New York snow slowly melt away brings a calm unfound in all other aspects of her life.

Spring is also when her flowers begin to bloom, when she no longer needs an assistant to buy them from a ridiculously expensive store. With her wealth, she is able to afford the small backyard where she keeps her garden, carefully planted flowers, ranging from roses to chrysanthemums to lilies, and in the far-left corner, sits a beautiful cherry blossom tree.

Watching that bloom is the peak of her year, as the icicles slip away and snow drips into the grass. The dirt begins to thaw, and Miranda can go back to tending each flower with care.

Out of all her accomplishments, of everything she has possibly achieved, Miranda Priestly is the most proud of her little garden. Had she failed in the industry, botany would’ve been what she’d taken up—an answer to all those annoying questions of “What would you be if you were not _Runway’s_ editor?”.

This little garden, filled with its roses, chrysanthemums, lilies, and cherry blossom petals, is her haven, away from the bustling life of the city, and the silence of her marriages. She tends to her garden as often as she can, but some days, her flowers end up drooping and some years, they don’t bloom at all.

Her mother had a big, beautiful blooming garden. It encompassed their entire front lawn, and was by far the prettiest in the entire neighbourhood. Young Miriam would watch as her mother swept up her bright blonde hair and got onto her knees to plant roses upon roses into sand-like dirt. When her mother left, she left behind the roses, and Miriam tended to them everyday.

Right after high school, she jumps on a bus and runs all the way to New York. Ever since, she wishes she could’ve taken one of her mother’s flowers with her, but she supposes that a pocket of seeds will have to do. Once she arrives, she first lands an apartment, a job, and then a pot for a rose. It blooms on her windowsill.

The first time she accepts a ring, it’s to Samuel and they’re both straight out of college and incredibly young, barely affording their small apartment complex. But Miranda just manages to keep her mother’s rose alive. It’s the only flower she keeps, and it isn’t until she moves into the townhouse that she plants more.

Miranda’s career grows faster than Samuel’s, and she’s the one who puts the down payment on their house. (She thinks this is the first time their marriage started to break.) The land costs more than the building, she doesn’t care—it’s the land she wants anyways. Finally, she is able to have a slice of a garden in this grand, bumbling city.

Painstakingly, each bulb is planted. Each colour carefully arranged, each one to reflect another. Maybe this is where she gets her eye from.

She’s too busy with Runway and her garden to notice that Samuel came home with another woman’s perfume on his coat, and it isn’t until five years into their marriage that Miranda notices. Hands shaking, her voice echoes across their house, and she flings his things out onto the street. She rips a rose out of her garden, and collapses into the grass.

She vows to never lose her temper like that again.

In her second marriage, a marriage that was by far the kindest—she didn’t deserve Henry and she knew it—her flowers blossom and the times when Henry tended to them, they blossomed the most. He doesn’t mind the dirt on his hands, and he doesn’t mind Miranda switching out bouquet after bouquet around the house. He helps plant the chrysanthemums, right beside the roses she had nestled on her own.

So, when she’s sprawled across their bathroom floor with blood pooled around her, Henry holds her and carries her all the way to the ambulance. After, they bury their first in their small little garden, Miranda doesn’t mark it with a grave. Going out on her own, asking her assistant to set aside an hour of time on a Wednesday, she picks out the sapling of a cherry blossom tree, the smallest darn thing, and cradles it on the subway ride home.

Henry and her carefully bundle the tree into their garden, and over the years, Miranda watches it grow.

She watches it grow as she and Henry grow apart, and when she becomes pregnant with the twins, her garden takes a little backseat. She still waters it as much as she can, but most of it is left to Henry.

When her darling girls are born, she’s so split between Runway and them that her garden slowly starts to wither. Days go by without water, and Henry loses the time as well.

But as her flowers start to die, the tree flourishes stronger than ever.

Slowly, Henry starts coming home later and the girls grow up. Miranda knows these signs well, but she knows that Henry deserves some type of happiness and knows he can’t get it with her. So, it is not a surprise when he confesses and asks for a divorce. She lets him go, as she should’ve all those years ago, and quietly explains to her girls.

Her garden has nearly completely died and it takes nearly an entire year to bring it back to life again.

But the cherry blossom stands true, and each year ‘round springtime, its petals sprout, and Miranda is brought back to a calm.

As her daughters, her most beautiful and darling of flowers grow, she makes a little room in her garden for them to play in, to let them flourish among the beauty. Because Miranda might not be the best mother in the world, but one could not test her love.

Then, then Stephen enters.

He buys her seeds, bulbs, and stalks, along with bouquets themselves. She’d thought she’d seen his type before, the suave, smooth businessman, but Stephen, he was something new.

He charms her girls just as he had charmed her, and when the three words fall of his lips, she believes him. (And he seems to believe them too.)

Miranda watches him as he runs with the girls in her garden, as their peals of laughter reach her ears.

This could be the life. This could be it, she thinks. She hopes. (That is, until it isn’t.)

She supposes that the crumbling of her third marriage is the saddest, as unlike the two before, Stephen doesn’t cheat. He doesn’t fall in love with another woman. He just falls out of love with her, and quite frankly, at this point Miranda isn’t quite sure which one hurts more. She blurs the lines with alcohol, and doesn’t notice that her assistant tucks the liquor away.

At this time, her flowers are still blossoming and the tree is still blooming, so something’s consistent among her trainwrecks of marriages.

So yes, she thinks. Spring is the peak of her year.

II.

Summer is busy. Her flowers bloom but she barely has the time to pay any attention to them.

Rushing her daughters to summer camps, summer is where she takes her time off. Granted, the office doesn’t get any quieter; it just slows, a little. Honestly, Miranda is probably the only person who notices, but it slows.

Where in her life everything good and bad seems to happen any other time of the year, summer is just there, and it’s slow.

Miranda has never liked slow, she’s always thrived on the constant moving parts of life, how everything leads to anything and how nothing ends in nothing.

Her flowers bloom without much care, and Caroline seems to have taken an interest into tending for them, so it’s one more thing off Miranda’s mind. (She’s not sure if this is a good thing or not.)

Watching as her daughter carefully sprays onto the roses, she cups her coffee, nestling it in her hands. The cherry blossoms bloom, and her lips curve as Caroline picks up the petals from the grass.

Summer may be slow, but at least it’s consistent.

She replaces assistant after assistant, changes spread after spread, and battles in boardrooms over budgets.

Recalling very slightly hiring a complete fashion disaster—what was her name, Andrea, Andy?—it’s the only thing that stands out from her summer. A very young girl, twenty-four tops, with unkempt brown hair and a superiority complex larger than her impressive resume, Miranda supposes this would be fun. A summer walk in the park, so to say. (But she’s not surprised when the girl thrives, though not at first.)

Bumbling around the halls of Runway, the girl and Emily fumble with basic jobs, but Miranda notices the Jimmy Choos on the first day, and knows that Nigel gave them to the wannabe journalist.

Her marriage is straining, and Miranda knows why. (It’s also the reason why her other two failed.) Andrea pops up when it’s most convenient—her garden is being tended to, and this time, it isn’t Stephen and it isn’t Caroline. But just as she’s managed to show up when it’s most convenient, she’s also managed to show up where it’s most inconvenient.

The first time Stephen hits her, she shrugs it off, and he doesn’t do it again. It’s not a big deal, she thinks, even though she knows that it should be.

Their fights get more heated as their marriage ages, and Miranda finds excuses to stay at the office—not that she really needs to; most of the time she actually does have something to do.

Her girls notice, and she wonders if they’re preparing for an impending divorce. She recognizes the signs better than anyone, and guesses it will probably take a few months for Stephen to make up his mind.

But he hits her again, this time strong against her cheek. Flabbergasted, Miranda stumbles over her feet and trips to the ground. Her cheek burns. Whipping his hand back in shock, he reaches out to help her, but Miranda flinches.

She can’t think.

“Leave—” she spits out, refusing to meet his eyes. “Just—”

Miranda doesn’t see him go, but his footsteps echo in the empty hallway. She hopes they hadn’t woken her girls, and slowly gets up.

A squeak comes from the staircase.

What—

It’s Andrea.

Miranda’s eyes widen, and she steadies herself with the railing. The girl’s mouth gapes, and her doe-eyes stare at her with fear. Heeled feet scamper down the stairs, and Miranda collapses into an armchair.

Her hands are shaking. One slips up to her cheek, and she winces. She’s not sure if it will bruise or not, but knows that Andrea saw.

The next day, she can hear Emily and Andrea’s frantic whispers in the small kitchen, both worrying their heads off. Miranda smirks; it’s nice to know that she hasn’t completely gone soft.

Dangling Andrea’s job right in front of her, Miranda demands the impossible seventh Harry Potter book. She’s sure this would break an ice between her and her girls, and just maybe, she can break to them that she and Stephen will be getting a divorce. (Miranda’s not quite sure when she made this decision, but she’s made it now, and what Miranda decides is what she sticks with.)

When Andrea drops the book on her desk with a satisfying flop and a smug “Anything else, Miranda?”, she’s just a little impressed. Just a little.

As her girls are off to their grandmother’s—Henry’s mother—the days are just starting to get shorter, and Miranda’s slow, consistency of summer is just about over. Looking out the window, the petals on the cherry blossom tree are just about to fall, and the rumours are just beginning to swirl.

A calm before the storm.

III.

Where spring is the peak of her year, autumn is the second. Her flowers continue to bloom, but petals start to fall. She’s preparing for Fashion Week, and her life furrows around her, nearly trapping her in her office. Nights get later and morning start earlier. She keeps Emily by her side, but keeps Andrea by even more.

The girl’s fashion has certainly improved, and she’s sure that it’s because of Nigel. Miranda has plans for a large promotion for him, and she’s going to do whatever it takes for him to keep it. There have been rumours swirling around about her replacement—there always are, but this time, it’s a little different—and Miranda doesn’t have much of a plan this time round.

Thirty years is enough to give to an entire company, and maybe, just maybe, Miranda’s ready for something new.

She’ll go out on her terms before she’s pushed out, but she hopes that she’s able to leave everyone behind in strong positions.

Runway has torn apart all three of her marriages, and to some extent, herself.

Miranda has poured her entire soul into fashion, into its numbers and its successes. It’s a shame, some would say, that the entirety of her career be reduced to a few, mere words.

Don’t get her wrong—Miranda doesn’t regret her career. She doesn’t regret anything about it—if you were to ask her, she would trade three more marriages for the same result. No, she does not regret it, but it doesn’t mean her life hasn’t been followed with a sort of hollowness. An emptiness.

Quite honestly, she’s tired. She’s tired of fighting over budgets for spreads that little inspiration, tired of watching her girls grow up without a mother, tired of watching everything crumble around her.

The drive that had pulled her out of downtown Detroit finally seems to have vanished, and her heart is heavy at every thought of Runway.

With the flurries of Fashion Week around her, Miranda is neck-deep into preparations, and nearly forgets about her marriage, and her garden. Caroline continues to take care of it, but she’s getting busier too, with school and extracurriculars. Stephen has already moved out, and Miranda’s face never really bruises.

Andrea has made herself more of a constant in her life than her husband, and when Emily breaks her leg, Miranda offers her a choice. A test. (For Miranda or Andrea, she’s not quite sure.)

Andrea takes the offer, and Miranda knows that she’s just destroyed a relationship, however little of a friendship it seemed before.

She says her goodbyes to her daughters the night before she leaves, neither of them sobbing or threatening her to go to their father’s if she didn’t stay. When she whisks away in the early morning, Caroline’s small wave in the window nearly brings tears to her eyes, but Miranda merely gives her an air-kiss and heads straight for Paris.

Irv has been scheming for some time now, and Miranda knows when it’s her time to bow out. She’s heard names, most prominently Jacqueline Follet, the young French editor. Had Miranda not felt the emptiness to her absolute bones, maybe she would’ve done something—Follet would’ve ran for that Holt job in a heartbeat. But Miranda Priestly, it seems, that for the first time, is utterly and primely exhausted.

Perhaps she should care some more. Perhaps she shouldn’t.

Her third night in Paris, the divorce papers come.

She doesn’t bother to take a look, and just slams them on her coffee table. Flinging open the doors on her balcony, she finds the liquor in the small fridge provided, and takes a swing directly from the bottle. Kicking off her shoes, her feet pad quietly on the cold stone. The Eiffel Tower shimmers in the distance, and leaves begin to fall from the trees.

She’s not sure how long she stands there on the balcony, sipping from the bottle. She’s also not sure when the door of her suite opens, and heels click softly on the marble. A hand gently takes the bottle from hers, and long, brown hair sweeps across her arms as Miranda is led back inside.

The couch blurs a little, and so does everything else. She feels herself being sat down, and a pad of paper being placed on the table beside the divorce papers. Then, heels click back out of her room, and the door closes gently.

IV.

Miranda absolutely detests winter. She abhors everything about it. The boundless snow, everything that goes on at Runway, the constant endlessness of it all. Winter in New York is harsh, but it’s nothing compared to her childhood Detroit snowstorms.

Her mother’s flowers would sit withered underneath the heavy snow, and each spring, Miranda would watch as her mother painstakingly rebuilt their front lawn from scratch.

Her garden doesn’t get completely rebuilt as much as her mother’s had, but after every winter, Miranda asks her assistant to lot one day of a week to carefully bring her flowers back to life.

But this winter, it’s different. The flowers droop, as they usually do, and the blossoms start to fall, but the tree isn’t what Miranda is watching. Snow has yet to fall, but it’s cold enough for there to be a thin layer of frost along the grass. In the middle of her little garden, stands Andrea, dressed in a terrible overcoat and the ugliest boots Miranda’s ever seen, but gently and carefully cultivating her flowers. The girl’s hands are shaking, and Miranda can see her breath in the air, small puffs like a dragon.

Her cheeks are very slightly pink, bright against pale skin and her hair is messily swept up underneath her hood.

Nursing her coffee in her hands, Miranda feels a little warmer this upcoming winter, and as she watches out her window, the first snow starts to fall.

Andrea doesn’t seem to notice, continuing with scampering around in her little garden, but just after she leaves, a thin sheet of snow sits on the grass, covering both her flowers and cherry blossom tree.

Miranda wonders if Andrea would’ve stayed had she thrown Nigel under the bus, had she saved her own job. (Probably not.)

But Miranda remains on some board of some company in some industry and Andrea had stayed. Stayed, when she could’ve advanced her career in whatever it was. She wonders if the girl had made some kind of deal with Nigel, but at this point, Miranda’s beyond the sense of caring.

She’d thought the tiredness would go away after she’d left Runway, but it seems that the longer nothing goes by, the more the tiredness piles on.

Miranda’s not quite sure of anything at this moment. She tends to her garden, spends more time with her daughters, and signs her divorce papers. Where when Runway was through her blood, Miranda didn’t need something to push her.

But as thirty years in the same job vanishes just like that, everything’s just evaporated.

Andrea comes by each day, reading out her schedule to her and tending to her little garden. She makes lists of what the housekeeper needs to buy, and lists of what she needs to buy. Every once in a while Miranda sees the girl typing frantically away on a laptop, and assumes that it’s for some little writing project of hers.

A few months after her leaving, Miranda sits in a plush armchair, a glass of scotch in hand. She’s drank little, deciding to have had a drink with a book. Andrea’s still here—Miranda can hear her typing.

_Crash._

“Oh fuck!”

Miranda stifles a laugh, and heads towards the kitchen. A glass is shattered on the floor, with Andrea frantically trying to clean it up. Miranda watches with amusement, until the girl notices her.

“God, I’m so sorry Miranda—”

Miranda stops her.

“Leave it for tomorrow, Millie will clean it up,” she says, taking the broom from Andrea.

“Oh no, it’s fine, I can get it done right now.”

Andrea takes the broom back and continues on sweeping, the little clinks of glass scraping against the floor. Miranda shrugs and lets her go at it, picking back up her book and glass.

Swirling the scotch with the ice, she stares into the fireplace, until she hears Andrea’s footsteps in the room. Snapping her head up, Andrea’s face is bathed in the warm light and Miranda can’t help but think that she’s  _absolutely beautiful._

Her heart beats in her ears.

Andrea tilts her head inquisitively, looking Miranda directly in the eye. Her hands are shaking. The scotch is shaking. The ice rattles to her.

Dropping to her knees, Andrea carefully takes Miranda’s hands in hers, never once breaking eye contact.

“Can I kiss you?” she whispers, their foreheads nearly touching. Miranda closes her eyes.

“Yes.”

Andrea, in her shabby sweater and old jeans, places a hand on the back of Miranda’s neck and pulls her in, teeth nearly missing as their lips meet.

Andrea, soft, darling Andrea, tastes of cheap chapstick and even cheaper wine, and Miranda kisses her right back.

A heaviness seems to have been lifted from her chest, and for the first time in a long time, the emptiness isn’t quite there.

(Miranda’s no longer tired.) Outside, the flowers wilt and tree grows bare, but Andrea is the warmth she hasn’t had in a while, and soon, the snow will be gone.  

V.

Once springtime rolls around again, her garden is blooming and the cherry blossom tree flourishes.

This time though, she is joined by Andrea, who is busy digging a space for their newest flower, a set of petunias. Adjusting her large, floppy hat, Andrea laughs brilliantly at her own joke, and Miranda just stares.

“I love you,” she blurts out, feeling the blood rush to her head right as the words left her mouth. Andrea’s eyes widen, and she drops her shovel, her jaw dropping. “I had spent so much time convincing myself that I was happy instead of asking if I’d actually knew the feeling at all.”

The confession hangs in the air, stale, untouched.

Then a pair of arms is wrapped around her neck, Andrea pulling her in for a hug. Miranda stumbles back in shock, but pats the brunette on the back.

Suddenly, Andrea’s lips are on her’s and Miranda’s pushed against the wall.

“I love you too,” Andrea whispers. “I hope I can make you happy.”

Miranda nods. The words don’t need to be said but she says them anyways.

“You already have.”

**FIN.**  

> _"You and I, we knew the strange corners of life."  —F. Scott Fitzgerald_

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this completely last minute for my lovely friend Zigostia's birthday, and I hope you enjoy! (There's probably a bunch of mistakes; this was written mainly between the hours of 1 - 4 am.) 
> 
> Happy birthday, and to many more!


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